Anthony Gormley at the Royal Academy London
Various images from the Gormley Exhibition
Various images from the Gormley Exhibition
Slider deck above
terry harris 17 Sep 2019 8:14AM
You've reached the top of the sycophants greasy pole Lucy ,nobody agrees with you but what's important is that you mouth the received status quo of artistic mediocrity. From poorly executed child like drawings to twisted rusting iron. It's all good to you. Grow a spine Lucy this is typical art school tosh. I know I've taught in these institutions , what we are talking about here is success, Gormley has reached the top of the greasy pole but what significance does it have to the body politic ...zero nada nil. We suffer it because ridiculous art critics like you follow the crowd ad infinitum....give us a break ...ennui ..."a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement."
Patrick Caffrey 17 Sep 2019 7:48AM
Not sure which is worse , Gormley's pathetic attempts to be an artist , or the gormless art critics who think it is worthy of attention .
michael barber 17 Sep 2019 5:08AM
The secret of enjoying art is to see what you see not what some 'expert' tells you what it means. Remember that bulls shi.. is meant to baffle brains.
ef rustrated 17 Sep 2019 4:05AM
There may not be much to appreciate here, but I've always found "Angel of the North" inspiring.
terry harris 17 Sep 2019 8:02AM
@Peter Storrey maybe that's because your an idiot ?
Peter Elliott 17 Sep 2019 3:08AM
Anyone at all can do this stuff. But no-one today can do what Rembrandt or any of the great masters did.
Garry Lavin 16 Sep 2019 11:45PM
These comments are an installation aren’t they?!..........
Clive Hutchby 16 Sep 2019 11:16PM
There is no talent here whatsoever. Not a jot.
T Coveney 16 Sep 2019 8:42PM
Listening to Gormley talk on Channel 4 News I realised he is a complete charlatan.
Hadrian Veritas 16 Sep 2019 8:23PM
What a load of rubbish.
The last place that we visited was the Royal Academy in Piccadilly to visit the Anthony Gormley Exhibition . An amazing building and very impressive . The 1st of the Gormley exhibits was on the ground out side the building and was a sculpture of his baby daughter made years previously . The visit was planned for about 3pm in the afternoon as a time slot had to be arranged so that only so many people visited at one time and that everyone got a chance to look around. This was the first time I had visited the RA and a Gormley exhibition.
I'm not sure if I knew what to expect, yes I knew of his Angel of the North and the metal men as they are well known sculptures , however I'm not sure if I was ready for his more Avant Garde exhibits. They don't really speak to me. His Mothers Pride exhibit bitten bread with his figure in the middle . It's quite effective but really rather quite mad ! I wonder how long it will last. All his figures are based on his own body including the one in the bread exhibit.
The building its self is very beautiful, very high ceilings and well lit from above but the rooms we visited were light by light as some didn't have windows at all just connecting doors. The exhibits were very well placed and there was enough space around them to walk around easily and for everyone to look around properly.
You have to consider the work which must have taken months to install especially the Matrix which was hung from the ceiling and weighed 6 tonnes made from 6mm weld mesh reinforcing bar, which is used in buildings made of concrete. This took a lot of work to construct as one box of wire had to be put inside another , it was constructed on site and has 1 million welds. It is quite and impressive structure and people were spending a long time wandering around and underneath it. It is 17m long 12mtres wide and 10.5 metres high so BIG !
The cave has a combined weight of 27 tonnes and the floor had to be reinforced to take this weight. The steel was brought in from Germany and had to be brought in piece by piece into the building and fabricated in place. Gormley suggest that not many people will know that this represents part of the body.
I have placed a link below from the RA showing how the installation of 3 of the pieces was done and very interesting videos as they are talking to Gormley about his work and shows the exhibits being put together.
Clearing V11 was made from 8k of coiled steel taken into the room and allowed expand and uncoil itself , the idea is that you should be able to walk through it, but during our visit I would say that more people walked around the edge of it than through it. I also read afterwards that if you hit the wire then it would resonate
The iron men of Lost Horizons are placed at different angles and heights in the room some are hanging upside down from the ceiling some are placed horizontally at waist height some vertical . All are base don Gormleys nude body as he uses no one else
I do rather wonder what people made of the exhibition, they certainly weren't jumping up and down with excitement, puzzlement maybe with some of the exhibits. If I looked at the people there probably an older audience, when we visited, though perhaps our group made up for that.
So I have looked for comments or critique from people who have visited to see whether their reaction was similar to mine. I certainly am not on the same wavelength a Gormley and find it quite difficult to understand his thinking. These can be found below.
Louisa Buck from the Art Newspaper feels that some of his most compelling work was of his tiny daughter and her I quote. "Marooned in the expanse of the RA’s courtyard is a sculpture of a tiny baby, cast in solid iron from the six-day-old body of Gormley’s daughter (now 30-something). Paloma is a painfully vulnerable but utterly compelling presence."
Saying that size was not everything, in reference to the Cave and the Matrix. I cannot read from this whether she actually liked the exhibition or not . It was more a comment on what to expect there.
I read an article about the exhibition by Lucy Davies in the Telegraph 16th September 19 but it was the comments that followed it that interested me more and they were very less favourable about the exhibition. Whether they had visited or not they don't say, but they don't think much of Gormley's art ,likening it to the sort of thing children might do.
Antony Gormley; Laura Cummingham– review in the Guardian September 19
Another art critic in the Guardian felt that the best exhibit was the baby outside the Academy and the second one to liken it to a bomb
There were 2 comments here from people again not sure if they had visited the RA, but again they were unfavourable not liking Gormleys work at all .
I think what has been called in the past pretentious claptrap. I think I agree with many of the comments expressed by commenters in the paper .
Clearing V11 was made from 8k of coiled steel taken into the room and allowed expand and uncoil itself , the idea is that you should be able to walk through it, but during our visit I would say that more people walked around the edge of it than through it. I also read afterwards that if you hit the wire then it would resonate
The iron men of Lost Horizons are placed at different angles and heights in the room some are hanging upside down from the ceiling some are placed horizontally at waist height some vertical .
Antony Gormley; Laura Cummingham– review in the Guardian September 19
Another art critic in the Guardian felt that the best exhibit was the baby outside the Academy and the second one to liken it to a bomb
There were 2 comments here from people again not sure if they had visited the RA, but again they were unfavourable not liking Gormleys work at all .
I think what has been called in the past pretentious claptrap. I think I agree with many of the comments expressed by commenters in the paper .
The cave which really was the last exhibit wasn't recommended for any one who was claustrophobic as it was pitch black inside until you got to the middle and then there was some light . You had to feel your way along stooped down. I managed to bang my head by going the wrong way and got back on track. I think Gormley wants this to be rather like being born again perhaps.
In early January he complained about people taking selfies and photographs wanting people to remember what they saw. I think he was wrong with this as there would be people who couldn't afford to go, people who live away may be abroad and wouldn't see it. He's getting paid no doubt, so I would say don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Maybe not everyone got his( Gormley's ) inner feeling on the exhibition I think I probably didn't , I think I preferred looking at his drawings and notebooks as to me these were more accessible and easily understood, I really don't want to be looking for some hidden meaning when I go to an exhibition, I want to be entertained, to learn something, being informed.
There was no music played. There were plans of the exhibition. Everything was well displayed and drawings that matched each other were placed together I don't think that people interacted as such here as I don't think that you were encouraged to touch the pieces, other than the wire exhibit .I liked the cast men, but would prefer to see them in place on the shore line at Crosby Bay where you can see them being submerged and reappearing again with the turn of the tides.
The last place on the way out is always the gift shop, where you can buy overpriced memento's of your visit, sorry I am always cynical about these. I remember my son always said it cost him a fortune when his family was young, running the gauntlet of these places.
This is the norm however, where ever you go there will be the obligatory shop on the way out of the exhibition this is where they make the extra income that is required to help keep places like the RA going.
The prices were perhaps average for London. There was a book with images from the exhibition which I think was £20 I think so maybe not too bad , but cotton shoppers at £12-50 a tad expensive.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/antony-gormley-making-of-video
Comments from Readers letters
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/reviews/forget-bodies-gormleys-abstract-art-make-worth-visit-royal/
https://www.timeout.com/london/art/antony-gormley-review
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/review/gormley-review
As of the 23rd March 2020 the one piece that I am revisiting and stands out from everything else at the exhibition is the solitary man of metal in the room on his own with his head bowed, very poignant and alone as perhaps we all should be, heeding this especially if we want to get through this current Corvid 19 pandemic. I should also include the image below with the figure looking out to sea. Alone in what is still a beautiful world.
We come with nothing and we leave with nothing
There was plenty of what you would call free advertising for this event as being based at the RA that would be enough of a draw along with Gormley's name for all the Art Correspondents to go and view, onto top of which they would have gone for free, probably had free drink and snacks to go with it from which it would be hoped that they all gave the Exhibition the thumbs up.These included the main Newspapers and magazines .
Published articles below about Gormley's works kept here for my reference
A statue of himself.( as he was the nude model) from Another Place on the beach at Crosby Beach in Liverpool. There are 100 cast iron statues doted around a 3 km stretch of beach. They face out towards the sea and are covered by the sea each day with the incoming tide.
ANOTHER PLACE, 1997
Original proposal for the Wattenmeer, Cuxhaven, Germany (1995):
"To install a hundred solid cast iron bodyforms along the coast to the west and south of the Kugelbake. The work will occupy an area of 1.75 square kilometres, with the pieces placed between 50 and 250 metres apart along the tideline and one kilometre out towards the horizon, to which they will all be facing. Depending on the fall of the land, the state of the tide, the weather conditions and the time of day the work will be more or less visible. The sculptures will be installed on a level plane attached to 2 metre vertical steel piles. The ones closest to the horizon will stand on the sand, those nearer the shore being progressively buried. At high water, the sculptures that are completely visible when the tide is out will be standing up to their necks in water.
The sculptures are made from 17 body-casts taken from my body (protected by a thin layer of wrapping plastic) between the 19th of May and the 10th of July. The sculptures are all standing in a similar way, with the lungs more or less inflated and their postures carrying different degrees of tension or relaxation."
The idea was to test time and tide, stillness and movement, and somehow engage with the daily life of the beach. This was no exercise in romantic escapism. The estuary of the Elbe can take up to 500 ships a day and the horizon was often busy with large container ships.
In the end, the piece stretched 2.5 kilometres down the coast and 1 kilometre out to sea, with an average distance between the pieces of 500 metres. They were all on a level and those closest to the shore were buried as far as their knees. The work is now permanently sited outside Liverpool on Crosby Beach, U.K.
http://www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/230
From The Angel of the North in Gateshead to the Event Horizon piece that first appeared in London, then New York and subsequently Brazil and Hong Kong, Antony Gormley’s monumental sculptures have made him one of the leading figures in the art world. Bringing together one of the largest collections of his work to date, the Royal Academy of Arts hosts an impressive display over 13 of its main galleries. Visitors can expect mixed-media paintings with illuminating sculptures that often engulf the entire working space.
At the core of the exhibition is the artist’s exploration of our collective experience of the body and how we engage with it. The first piece, Iron Baby (1999), appears in the Annenberg courtyard: a single cast-iron newborn that suggests human vulnerability. We are led into the first main gallery, where 14 brick-like steel slabs seem to take ambiguous human forms despite their geometric mass. The form becomes more apparent in the sculpture Subject II (2019), where multiple 10mm steel bars take a slightly more anatomical shape, and finally Gormley plumps and softens the bodily figure in undoubtedly one of the exhibition’s highlights, Lost Horizon I (2008), where 24 life-size sculptures of the artist himself in six different cast-iron poses appear to defy gravity in their disorientating placements.
Visitors can move in any direction through the exhibition, encouraged to carefully stumble or crouch through the 8km of aluminium tube entitled Clearing VII (2019) before negotiating the claustrophobic, giant-scale, enigmatic Cave (2019). A complex 6-tonne web of steel mesh hangs ominously above our heads in Matrix III (2019), whilst a calming expanse of clay and seawater in Host (2019) invites the visitor to a quiet moment of contemplation, watching the gallery’s natural light and atmosphere react with this organic representation of the elements.
There are plentiful paintings and drawings, experimenting with natural pigments, various oils, and even blood, but there is an intentional absence of colour from the exhibition which sometimes gives it a slightly industrial bleakness. For Gormley fans, though, this show is a treat, given that the artist has also opened up his collection of personal sketchbooks, giving us a phenomenal insight into this extraordinary sculptor.
The Angel of the North is as much a part of Gateshead's identity as the Statue of Liberty is to New York. Since it first spread its wings in February 1998, it has become one of the most talked about and recognisable pieces of public art ever produced.
It was in 1990 that the site, a former colliery pithead baths, was re-claimed and earmarked for a future sculpture. When sculptor Antony Gormley was selected as the winning artist in 1994, his designs originally caused uproar. The controversial material and site of the sculpture were frowned upon. However, once in place many people's original views on the piece changed completely. Local residents have fallen in love with the Angel and it has become synonymous with Gateshead.
https://www.gateshead.gov.uk/article/5303/The-history-of-the-Angel-of-the-North
Amazing facts about the Angel of the North.
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It is believed to be the largest angel sculpture in the world
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It is one of the most famous artworks in the region - almost two thirds of people in the North East had already heard of the Angel of the North before it was built
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Its 54 metre (175 foot) wingspan is bigger than a Boeing 757 or 767 jet and almost the same as a Jumbo jet
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It is 20 metres (65 feet) high - the height of a five storey building or four double decker buses
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It weighs 200 tonnes - the body 100 tonnes and the wings 50 tonnes each
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There is enough steel in it to make 16 double decker buses or four Chieftain tanks
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It will last for more than 100 years
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It will withstand winds of more than 100 miles per hour
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Below the sculpture, massive concrete piles 20 metres deep will anchor it to the solid rock beneath
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It is made of weather resistant Cor-ten steel, containing a small amount of copper, which forms a patina on the surface that mellows with age
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Huge sections of the Angel - up to six metres wide and 25 metres long - were transported to the site by lorry with a police escort
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The total cost of The Angel of the North was £800,000.
The sculpture was designed by internationally renowned sculptor Antony Gormley.
Antony Gormley OBE, who was born in 1950, is at the forefront of a generation of celebrated British artists who emerged during the 1980s. He has exhibited work around the world and has major public works in the USA, Japan, Australia, Norway and Eire. Public work in Britain can be seen in locations as diverse as the crypt at Winchester Cathedral and Birmingham city centre. In 1994 he won the prestigious Turner Prize and in 1997 was awarded the OBE for services to sculpture. He has exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Gallery, British Museum and the Henry Moore Sculpture Gallery in Leeds.
"People are always asking, why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them. The angel has three functions - firstly a historic one to remind us that below this site coal miners worked in the dark for two hundred years, secondly to grasp hold of the future, expressing our transition from the industrial to the information age, and lastly to be a focus for our hopes and fears - a sculpture is an evolving thing."
Gormley said of the Angel: "The hilltop site is important and has the feeling of being a megalithic mound. When you think of the mining that was done underneath the site, there is a poetic resonance. Men worked beneath the surface in the dark. Now in the light, there is a celebration of this industry. The face will not have individual features. The effect of the piece is in the alertness, the awareness of space and the gesture of the wings - they are not flat, they're about 3.5 degrees forward and give a sense of embrace. The most important thing is that this is a collaborative venture. We are evolving a collective work from the firms of the North East and the best engineers in the world."
In January 20 Gormley complained about people taking selfies and using mobile phones inside the Cave and spoiling the experience for other people
I can only wonder as well what becomes of the huge "sculptures" come the time that the exhibition finished as they were all welded in place as were too large to get into the building otherwise. Will they be reconstructed somewhere else in the future. With things as they are at the present time March 21st 2020 I can see nothing going anywhere. Although the exhibition finished in December to remove the exhibits would probably take a fair amount of time and effort. Or will it get recycled ! I looked but couldn't find any answers to that one .!
Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live."[10] Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside."[10] His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical – a trace of a real event of a real body in time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Gormley
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/jun/25/art
But while it is undoubtedly arresting to see the real Gormley mirrored in these ways, he is at pains to explain that these works are not sculptures in the normal sense of being a representation of the subject. "I've never been interested in making statues," he says. "But I have been interested in asking what is the nature of the space a human being inhabits. What I try to show is the space where the body was, not to represent the body itself."